Research · Software
What AI assistants cite when people ask which software to buy
We asked 100 software buying questions, from “best CRM for small business” to “Mailchimp alternatives”, on five AI assistants in the United States, once each, and recorded every brand they named and every site behind the answer.
We build Goppa, which measures this for businesses. No company paid to be in this study, and Goppa itself is left out of every table.
The finding
Google AI Overviews for these questions had a YouTube video among their sources. ChatGPT: 0 of 100. Perplexity: 0 of 100.
Same 100 questions, same day. Reddit or Quora showed the same split: 54 of 95 AI Overviews and 50 of 100 AI Mode answers, against 0 of 100 on ChatGPT and 1 of 100 on Perplexity.
Each assistant looked in a different place. Google’s two answers drew on videos and forum threads far more than the other three. Perplexity cited review sites (G2, Capterra and the like) in 43 of 100 answers, more than any other assistant. ChatGPT cited the own site of a company it named in 96 of 100 answers, and no video or forum thread at all. For a software company, being in the answer on one assistant and on another are different jobs.
Where each assistant’s sources came from
How many answers cited at least one site of each kind. One answer can cite several kinds, so a row does not add up to the total.
| Assistant | Answers | YouTube | Reddit or Quora | Review sites (G2, Capterra…) | A named company’s own site | Other sites (press, blogs, lists) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 100 | 0 of 100 | 0 of 100 | 17 of 100 | 96 of 100 | 96 of 100 |
| Google AI Overview | 95 | 84 of 95 | 54 of 95 | 10 of 95 | 86 of 95 | 77 of 95 |
| Google AI Mode | 100 | 52 of 100 | 50 of 100 | 14 of 100 | 82 of 100 | 73 of 100 |
| Gemini | 100 | 9 of 100 | 6 of 100 | 23 of 100 | 88 of 100 | 95 of 100 |
| Perplexity | 100 | 0 of 100 | 1 of 100 | 43 of 100 | 90 of 100 | 100 of 100 |
The sites cited most
In how many of each assistant’s answers the site appeared as a source.
| Assistant | Most cited sites (answers) |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | zoho.com (27), softwarecompare.net (18), hubspot.com (18), zapier.com (16), rankite.com (16), technologyadvice.com (13) |
| Google AI Overview | youtube.com (84), reddit.com (52), zapier.com (28), pcmag.com (11), zoho.com (10), salesforce.com (7) |
| Google AI Mode | youtube.com (52), reddit.com (48), zapier.com (28), pcmag.com (10), zoho.com (10), quickbooks.intuit.com (8) |
| Gemini | zapier.com (34), pcmag.com (28), gartner.com (11), thedigitalprojectmanager.com (11), youtube.com (9), security.org (8) |
| Perplexity | zapier.com (40), forbes.com (28), capterra.com (24), blog.hubspot.com (22), g2.com (19), pcmag.com (14) |
Do the assistants agree?
questions where all five assistants named the same brand first.
A brand named by all five anywhere in the answer: 37 of 95 questions. Counted only where every assistant answered.
| Same brand named first | Questions |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT and Google AI Overview | 49 of 95 |
| ChatGPT and Google AI Mode | 50 of 99 |
| ChatGPT and Gemini | 40 of 98 |
| ChatGPT and Perplexity | 46 of 96 |
| Google AI Overview and Google AI Mode | 52 of 94 |
Who gets named, by category
The three companies named in the most answers in each category, across the five assistants (a company’s products counted together).
| Category | Most named (answers) |
|---|---|
| Accounting | QuickBooks Online (31 of 50); Wave (28 of 50); Zoho Books (25 of 50) |
| CRM | HubSpot CRM (33 of 49); Pipedrive (30 of 49); Zoho CRM (23 of 49) |
| Email marketing | Brevo (28 of 48); MailerLite (27 of 48); ActiveCampaign (19 of 48) |
| Help desk | Zendesk (22 of 49); HubSpot Service Hub (20 of 49); Zoho Desk (19 of 49) |
| HR and scheduling | BambooHR (21 of 49); Rippling (19 of 49); Gusto (15 of 49) |
| Social, forms and booking | Google Forms (13 of 50); Jotform (12 of 50); Metricool (11 of 50) |
| Project management | ClickUp (34 of 50); Asana (24 of 50); monday.com (21 of 50) |
| Passwords and security | Bitwarden (27 of 50); 1Password (21 of 50); Proton Pass (21 of 50) |
| SEO tools | Semrush (35 of 50); Ahrefs (27 of 50); SE Ranking (22 of 50) |
| Website builders | Squarespace (35 of 50); Wix (35 of 50); Hostinger (29 of 50) |
Method
Ten categories, ten questions each, phrased the way a buyer types them. Each question was asked once on each assistant, from the United States, on 31 October 2026 (ChatGPT: chatgpt.com search mode; Google AI Overview: Google AI Overview (model not disclosed); Google AI Mode: Google AI Mode (model not disclosed); Gemini: Gemini app (model as reported by the app); Perplexity: sonar). We used live answers with web search, the same way the assistants answer people. The brands named and the sites behind each answer were extracted automatically. Sites are grouped by domain: review sites (G2, Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice, TrustRadius, Trustpilot, Gartner, SourceForge, SaaSworthy, Crozdesk, Product Hunt), YouTube, Reddit or Quora, Wikipedia, the own site of a company the assistants named in that category, and everything else.
This is one run, in one market, on one date: a snapshot, not a trend. Assistants answer differently each time, so every figure is a count of answers on that day, not a fixed property of an assistant. Brands are compared by their first word, so “HubSpot CRM” and “HubSpot” are the same, and two products of one company count as one. 5 of the 500 answers failed or had no AI Overview and are left out of every count. We did not ask about online store platforms, and the 1 store-platform name an assistant volunteered is shown as “[withheld]” in the dataset.
How to cite: Goppa Research (2026). What AI assistants cite when people ask which software to buy. https://trygoppa.com/study/ai-software — CC BY 4.0.